Travel Trailer Blogs

Most of the time your fuel source will dictate which method will work best for you. For example if you are cooking with live coals on the ground and your fuel source is foraged but uncut limb wood, the tripod will give you some good options.

I lost my cast irons seasoning trying something new, what now? It is a quick fix that you can do readily after cleaning your cast iron cookware. It is just a simple matter of preheating the cookware, adding cooking oil and rubbing it down with a paper towel.

When the wagon trains were moving west as America was being settled, there weren’t any charcoal briquettes down at the corner convenience store, so everyone used hard wood or buffalo chips for cooking fuel.

Needing to apply heat to the top and the bottom at the same time is almost exclusively a Dutch oven thing. For example when choking corn dodgers, it is usually a cast iron frying pan that is used and the dodger is turned as needed with a fork or spatula. Here is a look at cooking corn dodgers over a campfire.

As a child here in these Ouachita mountains I discovered that there were some pretty cool secrets to be gleaned from a visit to Grandma’s kitchen. However this neat trick came from helping Grandpa’ as we processed a couple of fattening hogs for the freezer.

Because of it’s very nature, our much beloved cast iron cookware can get a light haze of red rust on it before you know it. Especially here in the humid deep south. A light haze is readily removed with a scouting pad and cooking oil while the cast iron is warm. Wiping with a white paper towel and light cooking oil will let you know when you have removed it all. Here is a quick 17 second video of the finished and ready to use cookware.

Every time you saw it while in storage, it put a smile on your face as you remembered those delicious treats that Grandma’ surprised everyone with, when you were a kid. Then after that smile, the next thought was, “it looks rustier every time I see it, I sure need to do something with it”. But, just what, you might think.

The first couple of days out of Hohenwald Tennessee home of Oliver Travel Trailers, we put in some longer days behind the wheel. Our thinking was that we were close enough to the factory that most folks in the area had already been to see the amazing Oliver.

Use of gravity to transfer fluids under boondocking conditions is not practical in many campsites. A couple of transfer pumps can make moving fresh water and black water simple. However those pumps need power and we solve that issue by using a battery jump start power pack on our twelve volt pumps. We clip the color coded power cables to the pump’s negative and positive wires and turn the pump on and off with the power pack’s front panel switch.

When you are in your favorite primitive campsite and the ranger comes around to say that your twenty eight day stay will be up tomorrow, and you immediately think, “so soon?”, you likely have a good system of extended support figured out.

Boondocking in these areas is a very cool thing that allows us to enjoy Mother nature’s splendor in a up close and personal way. However, each of those agencies have a set of specific requirements that cover the whole spectrum of activities during your stay. Many of the core values for those agency’s are the same, but, and now, that is a big BUT, each of the various Ranger districts can be ran as a small kingdom all unto itself, with the ability to adjust the regulations to suit the needs of that particular area.

After reading Larry Harmon’s preliminary announcement of this upcoming entry on solar, I only hope I can come close to delivering what he deemed it to be worth. As I stated in my introductory post, “…most of the ideas and information I will present will be taken from sources other than myself…” Let me state here and now that I don’t purport or profess to be any sort of a solar savant. I’ve read a lot about solar and I “think” I get it. If you find me in error, feel free to point that out. That said, let’s talk about SOLAR.